By Taylor Adams Cogan
Anyone who’s been in Dallas the last 20 years knows Deep Ellum has seen some significant changes over those two decades. But while buildings have gone up, businesses have changed, and residents have moved in and out, one little coffee shop has stayed the same.
At the intersection of Main and Murray streets sits Murray Street Coffee Shop, where Liz and Doug have maintained a business that’s a neighborhood staple for 21 years. It’s a charming space that hasn’t changed much in that time, which is probably why it keeps people coming back. The reliably strong coffee, fresh sandwiches, and kolache Fridays make the trip worthwhile, but the magic of the place really comes from the two people running the spot.
While you may sit at a table, minding your own business and typing away on your computer, there’s a good chance you’ll be pulled to eavesdrop on a conversation between Liz and a regular. It’s clear she knows all of them well and openly shares her life and her day with them. A quirky statement may be what pulls your attention, and then you want to know more about her.
There’s also a strong chance you’re not thinking the overalls-wearing woman behind the counter is a computer whiz.
Before brewing coffee for others, she was a computer scientist, starting her career in 1980 at a company where her future husband would work three years later. They were on a project team writing a little bit of software that would become the first toll tag system. Here’s some Dallas trivia: The Dallas North Tollway was the first widespread electronic toll collection system in the US. And the woman answering with a simple “coffee shop” when you call Murray Street was part of it.
“That was a lot of fun, we had fun doing that – writing a specific part that makes the gate go up and make it work mechanically,” she says. “Then Doug was getting his MBA at the same time at SMU, so he ended up going to the company’s vice president of international sales.”
While they were still at the company, they had their daughter, Rachael. (If you’ve spent time in the coffee shop, you’ve heard about her and Doug’s son Clint — these are rightfully proud parents of their adult kids.) Liz dropped her day job and consulted for the company for a while until she decided to go full-time as a mom.
“Doug continued doing technology stuff, and he ended up at a company that went through some kind of change. He ended up with a payout, and I had to do something because I was getting bored,” she says. “So, we decided we had to go back and do computer stuff or something completely different.”
Doug says that payout played a role, too.
“I could invest money in the coffee shop or pay taxes on it,” he says. “So rather than pay taxes, we opened a coffee shop.”
While different than their previous work, it wasn’t random. The couple had always wanted to have their own wine or coffee spot. In 2005, they saw the space that would be their future business home, and the rest is history, she says.
While the two levels are filled with a comfortable character, the space feels as welcoming as a living room. Before they moved in, it had been empty for years. Before that vacancy, some lucky soul was actually living there. He was a comedian, one of many entertainers and creatives living in the neighborhood then.
“It was a bunch of artists and photographers and musicians,” Liz says. “It was affordable to have music studios and photography studios down here at the time.”
“There was still nothing but freelancers and bohemians living in this neighborhood,” Doug says. “So my hope was to have a place where people could meet and gather and chat, and all that stuff – having a hospitable place was really the objective. I thought if we built it, they would come.”
The menu was simple when they started: They knew they wanted to do really good Italian coffee, starting with Illy. They didn’t serve a bit of food, and their approach to the drink menu was basic.
“We didn’t know anything about coffee other than we liked it,” Doug says, prompting them both to laugh. “Our first customers were saying, ‘Can I get a chai?’ and I was saying, ‘What’s a chai?’”
Lucky for them, a neighbor who managed a Starbucks in a Dallas suburb welcomed the couple to come to him with any questions. Through him and their own education, they sorted things out while filling the space with art and furniture they had collected.
“We get new people all the time who say, ‘This is great, it feels so cozy, it feels like an extension of our house,’ which is what we wanted it to feel like,” Liz says. “As far as the plan of how we put it together aesthetically, it just came together, I don’t know. We had a paint scheme, and that was it.”
For most of Murray Street Coffee Shop’s history, Liz has been the one running the day-to-day, greeting you as you enter, making your coffee, and answering the phone. Doug was still “at his real job,” as Liz says, doing marketing and management for a technology company. He’d still find energy to work at the coffee shop on weekends.
In the beginning, they were open seven days a week, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., with a beer and wine license. By 2008, the economic crisis hit, TABC ran up the prices, and the couple ditched the booze on the menu. Today, they’re open Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. – a schedule that’s a result of the COVID pandemic that they found works perfectly.
If you’ve sat on the first floor for a few hours, you’ll also see Liz running to and from her car, probably twice during the day. Those are her regular trips to grocery stores and local businesses to get the best ingredients for the coffee shop. Sure, that food menu looks simple on the page, but each sandwich is made with both care and the best ingredients.
From the salmon bagel or blinker sandwich at breakfast to the perfect turkey sandwich or Insider filled with vegetables, it all works because they don’t skimp on the best ingredients, and everything’s arranged just so.
Today, Doug is in the coffee shop more often than Liz. For anyone running a small business, there are evolving challenges that don’t seem to relent. When Murray Street opened, there were only four independent coffee shops in all of Dallas-Fort Worth, Doug says. It’s almost hard to imagine, as now you have four within four blocks.
Thankfully, the coffee shop keeps grinding. Liz and Doug have made a perfect little space that feels like home: If you move away and feel homesick for your city, you’re also feeling homesick for Murray Street.
“We’ve met so many great, interesting people over the years,” Liz says. “We’ve built a lot of friendships, and long-lasting friendships.”
“There have been all sorts of side benefits that are frankly more important, at the end of the day, than the financial aspects of the business,” Doug says. “Of course, the business must turn a profit, and we appreciate the neighborhood support.”
And maybe that’s why even as Deep Ellum keeps changing, Murray Street Coffee Shop maintains a steady presence.
